Wormling
by WorldsPariah
Summary: Taylor becomes an immovable, uncaring object in a world full of irritating schemers. AU.
1. Chapter 1

I lay in the hospital bed, next to my dying father. We both lay in silence, hoping against hope that Panacea would come. Logically, there was no reason why she shouldn't. My dad was horrifically injured, I was in terrible health, and the last Endbringer attack had been a week ago. The doctors couldn't help us, but surely _she_ would?

And so, we waited, exchanging mumbled words. I told him about the bullying, in some sort of vain attempt to keep him alive on rage or something. The day became night, and dad's breathing grew ever more ragged. Eventually, I fell asleep.

A dying creature fell towards the world. The world fell towards a thousand thousand stars of diamond that fell apart. The sky was filled with lightning, shards of crystal raining endlessly down in gold and silver light.

I was a vast creature, with an endless maw, and I ate the stars out of the sky, drank up the seas and cracked planets like eggs to get at the warmth below. I felt myself shatter. I saw the knife descend into my chest. My last thoughts before I died were how lonely the other one would be...

* * *

When I awoke, my father was dead. The dream I had was sticking in my head like an icicle, giving me the mother of all headaches. I looked silently at dad's corpse, and tried to get myself to cry. Instead, I just felt a vague numbness crystallize into a heavy weight on my heart and mind. I didn't even notice that my own injuries had scabbed over silver, nor did I remember how I got home that day.

The next days passed as a blur. The funeral was another frozen thorn in my mind. I refused to leave the house, until the police came and pulled me away, gently leading me down and out. I stayed with various dockworkers' families, and drifted through school. The trio said things, but it was so hard to focus, or think, or really do anything at all.

The blurring passed sometimes. This was one of those times. I was standing on a road, facing a fight between the Hounds of Darkness and the ABB. The Hounds had been a new gang whose first move had been to shut down the Merchants hard. The ABB were the most feared faction in the city, a reputation due entirely to Lung.

A bullet came towards me, a blur among thousands, and I nudged it aside with my silver-nailed finger. What was I doing? Oh right, Lacey had asked me to get something from the Association Office. Which was on the other side of the fight. I sighed, and walked forward through the fight. I tried to keep the bullets away from my clothes - it wouldn't do to get them torn, I didn't have Emma's infinite wardrobe. I had to catch some of the bullets, which stung my hands a bit, but then I was clear of the fight...

Lung's arm smashed into me and threw me back to where I had started. I stared at the dark sky for a bit, then sat up again. "Look." I grumbled. "I just need to get something from that office." Lung roared and crashed into me. I stopped him dead with one hand, shunting the excess energies into the Funerary Thorn as I had come to call it. It wasn't like the Crown Thorn, and needed the energy more.

I glared at Lung, pushed him aside and walked through the frozen fight. When I came back that way, with Lacey's package in hand, the fight was over, with only some spatters of blood and bullet casings as a sign. Beyond the obvious gouges and scorchmarks from the cape fight, of course.

* * *

Clarity came again when Emma said something truly dreadful. I dropped my act of being hut, and examined her curiously for a moment. Then I buried the school in the silence of a funeral mass, and walked away, a new thorn in my mind. Such a small thing compared to the other two, but what to call it? Names were important. Somebody tried to yelp as they failed to get out of my way and were sent crashing into the ground. The silence swallowed that sound.

Silent Thorn? No, silence was part of the Funerary Thorn. Thorn of Betrayal? Traitor Thorn? Too close to Emma. She didn't deserve to be remembered in a Thorn. I sighed at the difficulty of naming the little thing. Without a name, it was completely useless, merely eating what little energy I could spare it.

Then again, I did need a weapon of some sort, and unlike the other two which were Thorns because they pierced _me_ this was a Thorn because it was all sharp edges and gray colours.

The Ashen Thorn? That... fit. And so it was named as I walked out of the school for the last time. The gate was closed, but a nudge with my new weapon cut the chain that was somewhat futilely holding it closed and I went out to see the sea. I think it calmed me. Lacey wanted me to go to the bank today, to fetch some other documents.


	2. Chapter 2

I was at the bank when the Hounds of Darkness came crashing in. Grue, their leader gave some speech about how nobody would be hurt, while his second in command had her hounds growl at us. Not the most convincing performance, but I simply moved along with the others. I wonder why everything was so clear right now. There was no opportunity to grow a Thorn, so I took some time to examine the Hounds.

Grue, who could project darkness so deep it could take one of Purity's blasts, and unleash blasts of unadulterated terror. Hellhound who formed dogs into monstrosities with burning maws and bone armor. Regent who disrupted both man and machine. Tattletale was a mystery, but by all accounts not very pleasant. They were the core group of the Hounds.

Today, they had brought Railroad(who everyone knew had been Skidmark), Circus and Silver. Silver had beautiful butterfly wings, compound eyes and a hypnotic silver sheen, as well as minor Brute powers. There were rumours that she could command men with a word, but since she never spoke people weren't really sure about that.

Time passed. Money was fetched. I grew bored of clarity, and longed for the return of the Blurred Times where I didn't have all this input to sift through. The clarity became greater, almost painfully so. Then it became truly painful, and I hissed angrily. That drew the attention of Tattletale and Grue. Recognition flashed across their faces but then Tattletale said something to Grue who shrugged and turned his attention back to... The Wards. Quite a few of the Wards. Nowhere near enough to beat the Hounds, of course, but then not all the Hounds were here.

The Core Group and the Freak Show were, but the Wild Hunt and the Snake's Den were absent. I idly wondered why that might be when my eyes settled on the betrayer of my hopes. "Hello Panacea" I called, softly.

* * *

What would have been a fight wasn't when Grue dragged Panacea out of the building as a hostage. With a knife pressed to her throat, the Heroes couldn't make a move, and the Hounds left. It was known that Panacea would be returned in good health, much like it was known that she wasn't really in danger but having such an important target in a high risk fight would end badly for everyone. As the Hounds left, the clarity faded.

Then I was stuck waiting. The police and the PRT would want the witness statements, and nobody was allowed to leave. Clarity still haunted my senses, and to calm myself I fed the Ashen Thorn some more energy and began making small incisions in the wall. Panacea's face when I had called out to her, and the Hounds had realised she was there.

A soft giggle escaped my lips as I remembered the look of fear and shock on her was even more amusing because I had seen the look of triumph from a moment before when she realised her sisters were present. Glory Girl and Victoria(how that didn't get confusing at home, I couldn't fathom, even now that I could actually think.)

* * *

"Why did you draw attention to the presence of Panacea?" The PRT officer asked me. He seemed quite irritated that I had done that, and from the death glares I was getting from the Dallon Twins, they weren't at all happy with me either. I turned my attention back to the PRT officer and hmmed as I pondered my response.

"Revenge?" I offered lightly. He looked as if he'd been smacked in the face. "Revenge?" He asked flatly. "What kind of..." He shook his head. "I'm placing you under arrest for willfully endangering a national asset. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to a lawyer. Now get up, and come along."

There was a brief blurring of moments, and then I was somewhere where everything was a little clear. Annoyed, I lay back on the cot in my cell, and tried the next best thing: sleep. Of course, my body while it was given to lethargy and stiffness, didn't obey my wishes and I sighed again. This was my twenty-fifth attempt at rest. I could leave, of course, but that would be even more annoying in the long term.

The cell door opened, some man came and I was dropped in an interrogation room across from another faceless trooper. There was an annoying amount of clarity. "Hello Ms. Hebert." She said. "Do you know why you are here?" I smiled. "Yes. Do you?" I thought I could detect the beginnings of a frown. "Ms. Hebert, this is a serious matter-"

"For you" I interrupted. "I, on the other hand, do not care. Can't care. Won't care." I gestured absently with my hand. "Do you have any other questions?" She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Ms. Hebert, you could be facing a prison term of up to-" I glowered at her and interrupted again. "I do not care. Just keep me away from all the... clear things." I shuddered and muttered "How can you even stand to talk so much. The thinking required..." Another shudder. I hated this clarity.

Then I was back in the cell. This time, I was tired enough to sleep.

* * *

The ocean spread out beneath me. If I cried, would it overflow the distant shores? Why must I be alone...


	3. Chapter 3

I dreamed of boiling away the perfect ocean, tearing its shining blue away. At the same time, I saw through... not eyes, but something similar, that had not that colour but the idea of that colour, the figure that felt this pain.

I dreamed of a memory, watching myself fall and die. I felt that death, and how I was slowly cut apart. I felt something particularly important that had fallen away blossom, and knew I would never be again. But that was alright. There would be another.

* * *

I woke up in a cell, my thoughts still clear. Shadow Stalker was... looking shocked. A crossbow bolt was held between my two fingers, and I vaguely recall snatching it out of the air as I woke. The Crown really was useful for things like this, I mused as I got up. I called up the Ashen Thorn, gathering a ball of what looked like the static that could be seen on older TV models. I looked at Shadow Stalker, and wondered what had driven her to attack me. No matter. She had still tried to strike me, and that was unacceptable.

Then again, was she worth using the Ashen Thorn on. Decisions, decisions. Decisions I wouldn't have to make if things weren't so clear. I banished the ball of static and waved at Shadow Stalker, indicating that she should leave me alone to thing.

I was shocked when she shot me again. She must be mad, I decided. Trying the same thing and expecting different results was one of the definitions of madness that had been in one of the books I'd read once. I caught another bolt out of the air, then shredded both of the bolts I had so far with brief charges of silver-grey static. I shooed the teenage hero again, and this time she left me alone with my thoughts.

Time passed, and I worried that I had been forgotten. It turns out I was wrong, that I was a Parahuman and that if I didn't want to spend the rest of my life rotting in a prison for shutting an entire school up (it turns out subjecting people to complete silence for almost an hour is _bad_ ), I would take the same deal as Shadow Stalker and join the Wards. And suffer clarity for the rest of my existence. Still, it beat rotting away in a specially reinforced cell. My official announcement would be made in a few weeks. In the meantime, I had the pleasure of being personally introduced to the Wards.

And who, might you ask, was Shadow Stalker? Who was the one who had tried to murder me this morning, ineffectual as that was? Why, Sophia-FUCKING-Hess. I didn't even hesitate to name the new Thorn the Traitor's Thorn. Such a complete betrayal by the one organisation I had looked up to all my life definitely deserved that title.

* * *

I stared venomously at Hess, and she glared back. The remainder looked awkwardly between us, but with a huff I moved over to Missy, swept her up in a hug, and plopped down on a coach with her next to me. "You can reshape space, right? Do me a favour and keep that bitch away from me." I said. She glared at me. "I'm not your toy." She snapped. I nodded. "No, you're not. But you are the only thing worth being here for apart from Aegis's abs, especially if you keep that bitch away from me."

There was a bit of spluttering, and Aegis actually flushed a bit. Vista just seemed confused, but eventually did as I asked. Hess was further away. Vista said she couldn't do it all the time, and I had said that was fine. Aegis/Carlos sighed and said "Look, you're on the same team now. The same way. You'll have to get along some-" "{Negation}" I declared, ramming the concept of exactly how unlikely that was into his brain. All their brains.

There was quite a bit of wincing at that. "Owww" Vista moaned. "What did you do that for?" She asked plaintively. "It was the fastest way." I declared. "Anyway, I trust I won't end up paired with Hess on patrols?" Carlos grumbled something about how I was being childish, which I chose not disregard entirely. He eventually said he'd see what he could do. And then it was time for power testing, even though that was unnecessary. I knew what my Thorns could do.

* * *

I grunted as I got up from Aegis's punch. It turned out that the Brockton Bay PRT was so underfunded that they had to have a very hands-on power testing. Or maybe this was revenge for the Panacea thing. Probably that. It hadn't hurt, it just took so much damned mental effort to get up, to pay attention to what they were saying and what they meant. The fact that they communicated concepts in encoded soundwaves rather than directly was also slightly annoying.

No matter. The next punch. Eventually, they settled on Brute 3, especially after I mentioned getting punched by Lung and standing up again afterwards. Admittedly, he was only 8 feet tall at the time, but still.

Next I got to take out my frustration on various material samples and targets. Bursts of static, exploding spheres, stilling the target and a bunch of other applications of the Ashen and Funerary Thorns left me with a 'high' Blaster rating, with more details to be decided later after some more testing. The explosive aspect also merited a Shaker rating, as did the stunt I had pulled at the school. A small Stranger rating was attached once I demonstrated my ability to shut off all sounds I was emitting(and I reminded myself to use it when I wanted to sleep later. Or pointedly ignore people, since using it did something to my hair. Made it float or something.)

The ability to use said abilities at close range was also worth a Striker rating, and then we were done. I could go to my fancy new cell, and rest. This thinking business was exhausting and I couldn't understand how the old me had been able to do it all the time. Maybe she'd had her own Thorn? Maybe dad had had something to do with it? And wasn't I forgetting something?

Oh well. Nothing worth caring about, I was sure.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up after a short nap.

Clarity drilled into my skull. They had said I couldn't leave until Kurt and Lacey were here. They were _wrong_ of course, but leaving when they didn't want me to took so much effort. So I sprawled on the couch in the Ward's quarters, and waited. Vista and Aegis were still here, with the others on patrol or something. I hadn't really paid attention.

The Traitor's Thorn pulsed like a leaking blister at the back of my mind, offering a dozen ways to leave unseen. Including a diamond-based cloaking device, which I gave a moment's consideration to before a new wave of Clarity rolled over me like a swell of magma. It burned away all the nascent ideas from the Thorn and I groaned, pulling myself up.

I had only taken two steps towards the exit when Aegis was in front of me. I grumbled at him as he looked at me sternly. The Crown could stop me from getting hurt, but it wouldn't prevent Aegis from simply picking me up and setting me back on the couch - this I knew from experience. I paused suddenly. It was kind of like a hug when he did that, and I hadn't really had one of those in a while, that I could remember. One during the Blur didn't count.

I took another step forward, Aegis sighed and picked me up and put me back on the couch. I grinned through the pain, and sprawled out again. Then Shadow Stalker and Gallant came back. Vista perked up, and I glared at Shadow Stalker. Gallant was moving towards me, and he seemed angry. "Panacea declared her support for the Undersiders." He stated flatly.

"And I should care why exactly?" I muttered. Gallant stared at me, and then started yelling. I hurled a blast of silence at him and growled "Keep it down." He hurled something at me, and infinity exploded in my mind. Black filled the spaces in between, and rain roared through space, thundering down and extinguishing the stars, and drowning galaxies in its wake.

In short, it was amazing. I looked at Gallant eagerly and said "Do that again." He, and the other Wards were staring at me in shock for some reason. I frowned. "Do it again... Please?" I asked plaintively. Gallant's expression hardened. "No." He said flatly.

Huh. A smaller shudder through the infinity of my mind, nowhere near as amazing, but still. Something. "Plea~se?" I said again. Shadow Stalker snorted and said something unkind about me, drugs and sex. I would have ignored except Gallant seemed to agree with her - or so the Traitor's Thorn whispered at the back of my mind. It also gave a comment I could reply with... The Crown noted that it would increase the odds of combat to 1. I scowled, and went back to the couch. I kept my eyes on Gallant though. Whatever he had done, I wanted to experience it again.

The stars of my mind burned serenely around my Thorns. Clarity poured lava into my brain. Gallant refused to look at me, and Vista had joined Shadow Stalker in glaring at me. Odd that. Not that it mattered, really. Food arrived, and I watched Gallant and the others eat and talk. At some point Aegis brought over some food... A slice of pizza and a donut. He put it down on the coach and then floated away again. I was briefly, faintly jealous of his flight, before the Traitor's Thorn produces a schematic for a cloak that should let me hide from gravity. A spike of Clarity burned it away a moment later.

I wondered, later, if he had forgotten about it? Except for Vista, the Wards had all gone home. Kurt and Lacey had dropped by briefly, then been dragged away to take care of paperwork. They still hadn't returned. Clarity was fading from my mind, little by little and instead of torrents, only dribbles of magma fell into the stars of my mind. Thinking was hard, with the Blurring so close, but still I pondered how I could get Gallant to shoot me.

Vista was still shooting me the odd angry look. I looked back at her, and mildly said "What?" Vista snapped. "You waltz in here, give everyone a _fucking_ headache, are responsible for making _Panacea_ go villain _and_ you go after Gallant like some kind of junkie looking for a fix! And you have the _fucking AUDACITY_ to ask WHAT?" She was panting by the end of her tirade, but I had noted something she said. "Villain... Gallant is a Ward and Wards in this city fight... Villains..." I mumbled.

The Traitor's Thorn and the Crown both indicated that this would be an optimal strategy for getting shot by Gallant's beams again. Of course, Kurt and Lacey would get in trouble if I stayed with them, but every villain needed a lair anyway. And minions. But that could come later. First, I needed to escape - the Traitor's Thorn provided the cloaking device again. Sure, it got washed away every few minutes by the evermore distant buzzing of Clarity, but once I had the materials together... I needed a diamond. Or some other light-scattering lump of carbon.

I grabbed a pencil, and destroyed the wood with a burst of static, then began carving into the carbon below. Cutting it away in only some dimensions soon resulted in a tiny rod of clear, carbon-based glass. Twist the wires like so, blur the molecular edges here to fuse the materials. Wait for the schematic to be reproduced after another spike of Clarity from Vista's glare. Doctor the wires via material annihilation to increase conductivity. Power source... Water would do. Destroy the molecular bonds to free up the hydrogen, ignite via friction generated heat...

The explosion in my hand actually stung a bit. The Crown had increased tactile feedback to allow for more precise work, and that came back to bite me now. The delicate device in my mind couldn't be made from this... mess in front of me. The carbon-glass rod was functional, of course. Actually, now that the metal was melted... I reached for it and found it beyond my grasp. I looked up at Vista. "No blowing things up." She said coldly. Then she fetched some water and dumped it on the metal. The carbon glass shattered.

I scowled blackly. Why did these things have to be so hard? I huffed and covered myself in silence. I was going to wait until Vista's back was turned, but at that moment Kurt, Lacey and the paperwork arrived. What terrible timing. I looked around, spotted the window and bolted.

Once more, I cursed Vista as the window faded into the distance. "{NEGATION}" I screamed at her, piercing my own silence for a moment. She howled, clutching her skull, and I hurled myself through the window. It was a long fall, and the ground cracked as I landed. I was fine.

I ran until the Clarity faded, and everything became a blur again.


	5. Chapter 5

I wandered through a blurry world, colours washing over me and passing me by. I stopped when the colours were all the same, and stood there until they came back. I wandered some more, and found a place already swimming with browns and greys. Why was I here? Clarity tickled the edge of my universe, and I turned inwards to gaze at my Thorns.

The Queen hung at the centre of my being, a monolithic diamond core that the others had fallen from. What had once been my world was pierced open, and I saw myself - tall, skeletal, gaunt and speckled with dots of silver from some unknown injuries.

The Funerary Thorn was a circle of black spines, weeping constant black tears which burst with the sound of church bells. The ripples spread across the star-filled void, and silenced their nuclear roaring. A shadow of my self was reflected in its dark facets, and I turned away.

The Ashen Thorn was a perfect sphere that cut through my existence, and left shimmering shards of memory and reality in its wake. I busied myself putting them back together. It felt right. Then I saw my hands, and beheld the Traitor. A stern-faced woman with red hair. It felt wrong, loose, and I couldn't remember why.

I put some more memories together, and moved the Ashen Thorn away from my past, moving it to the outer edges of my world. Then I sent it screaming out into reality in a burst of static beams.

* * *

The Traitor's Thorn mumbled away about chemical bonds, physics, extradimensional spaces and the like. What it boiled down to, ultimately, was how to build an invisible fortress out of a shipwreck. After all, if I was going to be a villain, I was going to do need somewhere to rest, and image was important. Or at least, it seemed important when I began...

I looked at the half-complete structure before me. It had seemed so important just a few moments ago, a monument to my determination. I left it where it was, jagged edges cutting nothing and half-finished engines slowly winding down again. There was Clarity, nudging at the edges of my mind, and I shied away from it back into the Blurred non-existence.

Colours flowed by again, until I left the drab, metal-filled wetlands behind me.

* * *

I was in rather a lot of pain. Then I was not. I looked down at the silver flowing through the glass of what had been one of my appendages. The amount of pain seemed disproportionate for something so small. Worlds spun within me, stars burned out and up and... sideways. Some of the stars were burning in a distinctly sidewards fashion.

Then they flowed down my arm, and I stopped to watch silvery plasma flow through my limbs. There was no screaming from the glass statues around me. I frowned, and took a step. My leg shattered, shearing apart from the force of my step. I should have waited, I supposed. People might come here soon, and take me back to the Heroes who would...

I paused. I couldn't figure out what they were going to do next. I went back to feeling pain, and realised that my belly hurt. I looked down, and frowned. Silver flowed into flesh, and glass crinkled before falling off and away. But unlike the rest of me, it still hurt. My leg regrew and I staggered along and out of the glassy wastes.

The light refracted in oddly calming and pretty ways. I sat down nearby to watch while I waited for the growing to stop. I didn't leave until the the sirens came closer.

* * *

I looked curiously at the screen. My face flashed back at me.

"Taylor Hebert, on the run after causing the Winslow Incident where multiple students were exposed to complete deafness for over a hour..."

I blinked and the world blurred.

"Also suspected to have been behind the explosion that turned multiple individuals into glass statues after she was seen departing the area unharmed..."

The world became a colourful riot around me. Blues and greens became dominant, when Clarity, accursed cold and painful rushed over me. I paused, standing on the sand, and looked around. Parian's shop was nearby, but that was not where the wave had come from. Then I spotted him. He was charging me on his motorbike, halberd already lowered. People were screaming, distracting me. A wave silenced them.

Armsmaster was still approaching at speed, and a moment later his halberd smashed into my chest, yanking me off the ground. A blaze of grey static later and I was free, dropping and rolling away. I sent tentacles of static out after him, and he cursed as he sped away.

My stomach still hurt, even as the pain in my chest faded away. I walked into the ocean, where he could not follow.

* * *

Colours. I was on my back, and staring at the endlessly shifting colours above, and within. A buzzing filled my head, and weird black spots drifted across the sky. The pain in my stomach hadn't gone away, and I had come back here to this half-finished fortress. Armsmaster had reminded me of why I wanted it in the first place. Clarity floated across the sky, and walls of glass rose around the unformed labyrinth I had once intended as my lair.

Deep within me, something flowed up. Like and unlike the Gallant rains, a flood of... something. Anticipation? Nervousness? Excitement? I rose, and gazed out as Clarity flooded my world, leaving it sharp, frozen and clear. Grey flares of static curled around me, and then a bullet tore through my head, ripping out my eye.

Silver flowed, and I sent a scattering of grey projectiles out to cut through the covers of my enemy. Shining barriers appeared, and my static fizzled against them. I frowned. That was... something. An inconvenience certainly. I pursed my lips, and created a bigger ball of static, and then hurled it at the shields, where I let it erupt, scything through the ground and the water.

* * *

Mini-Interlude: The Heroes at the Harbour.

Shielder groaned as the massive orb crashed into his shield. "Damn. I though her eye was gone." He grumbled. "She's recovered already." Miss Militia said, flatly. Neither of the two where very happy to be here, trying to kill a child. Shielder muttered angrily as a dozen curving beams slammed into different parts of his shield. Then Purity dropped out of the sky like a falling star, blasts of hellish white light tearing into the boat their target had been in and turning into molten slag.

The gathered heroes stared at the pile of metal. Then the first of the tinker engines exploded, and things promptly got... weird.


End file.
